Tuesday, December 4, 2018

I've been playing Stuffed Fables lately- it is quite a nice dungeon crawler. One of the things that drew me to the game were the fantastic miniatures. Most of them are in that sweet spot between cute and creepy that comes out just brilliant.

When I'm painting my own sets of minis, I tend to avoid the official color schemes and instead look for ways in which I can reinterpret the sculpts with color. For Stuffed Fables, I decided to try and make all of the stuffies and enemies look worn, dirty and used. I think this fits in with the Velveteen Rabbit's concept of stuffed animals- they're real when they're stained and worn. Overall, I feel like this made the minis look a little more like Wyrd's Malifaux minis than most versions of Stuffed Fables that I've seen.

The game is a dungeon crawler in which the heroes are stuffed animals trying to protect their little girl from the nightmare monsters in the night.

So here they are. I made these photos very large even though the minis are quite small (especially the Stuffies themselves).

Friday, October 12, 2018

Lately, I've been playing Gloomhaven quite a bit, and I decided that it is a game that could use some Chibi minis to replace the hundreds of standees that come in the box.

Thankfully, most Gloomhaven enemies match minis that I've already got in chibi form (Zombies, Skeletons, human archers, slimes, etc). But for the PCs, and for the more distinct races, I felt that I needed to create some minis.

Here are the first four PCs that I made. They're all starting classes, so there's no need to worry about spoilers.

The Inox Brute. This was the first Chibi Gloomhaven character that I finished. I was very excited to make him. The body comes from a Cyclopes from Impact! Miniatures. The head is mostly my own sculpt- although I did have some plastic horns leftover from various GW kits.

The orchid spellweaver was a really fun one to make. She started life as two separate ninjas from Ninja All Stars (head and body). I really liked sculpting all of the crystals on her.

The Vermling gave me a bit of trouble. I needed something between a goblin and a Skaven, that could also fit in with the chibis I'd been making. I looked around for ones that would fit the style well, and eventually discovered that the Wiz-Kids Pathfinder Goblins were close to perfect. They just needed their ears fixed and tails attached.

THe last one is the human Scoundrel. I made here eyes glow to match the artwork (my wife played this character, but it definitely took her a minute to recognize that the character was, in fact, human.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

My entry at this year's Reapercon was the Tyrant that I made for Chibi Kingdom Death. The Tyrant is probably my favorite Kingdom Death character (at least so far).

His construction was fairly complex, using a combination of quite a few parts from various different minis, but none of them were prominent enough to be a "base mini" for the conversion.

While I was making him, I went back and forth on how to portray the markings on his head. On the official mini, they're sculpted in relief, and I've seen them painted as scars, tattoos or even gold inlay. I actually started sculpting them on my tyrant, until I decided that they'd look best as freehand tattoos across his head.

Overall, I was quite pleased with how he turned out, and the judges at Reapercon gave him a gold award.

Friday, September 14, 2018

Here is a miniature that I finished quite a while ago, but I never got around to posting him. He's from Studio McVey's stunning LE resin line (shame we haven't seen anything new from it for a while).

I painted him up for an RPG, and I think he came out rather nicely. For most of my minis, I prefer to use a black undercoat, but I decided to try white on him instead, to see how I liked it.

I discovered that I didn't like it at all. While the painting over the white isn't significantly different from painting over black, I found that it was more difficult to tell if my composition was working as I went- the bright white of the unfinished areas made it very hard to tell. Conversely, with a black undercoat, I can usually tell whether I've highlighted an area light enough and if my overall composition is working out.

The advantage that you get from a white undercoat is that you can more easily see the detail on the mini before you paint it, but that's not something I struggle with. While some people claim that your colors will turn out brighter if you're painting over white or black (yes, I've heard this claimed about both) I find that if you're doing enough layers to get a solid base coat, there's no way to tell if you used white or black to start from.

Friday, August 24, 2018

Here's a very old Reaver Titan that I got to do recently. It was made by Armorcast way back in the day- and was essentially just an up-scaling of the old Epic scale titan from the time.
That makes these old titans into a bit of a challenge. Just the size of the rivets and general lack of smaller details makes it hard for them to fit in with more current 40k minis. They can very easily end up looking like an old action figure more than a 40k mini.
The trick I've learned is that having some small details added in the painting- especially with the battle damage- goes a long way to making them fit in with a force.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Here's a commission that I did a while ago- these are quite a lot of ladies of Kingdom Death.
I think most of them were resins (except the Black Friday Ninja). Kingdom Death does some fantastic sculpting and the concepts are always really interesting.
While none of these were made to fit into the board game, most of them work just fine in that regard.

Thursday, August 2, 2018

When I first started making geek wedding cake toppers, the very first requests that I had were to create zombies and survivors to fight them.
Since then, I've done quite a lot of very different zombie apocalypse wedding cake toppers. I'm always interested to see what sort of weapons the bride and groom choose.

The shotgun is a classic anti zombie weapon. At close range, it can easily shred a zombie, and a head shot is likely to obliterate said head.
The drawback is the noise- your boomstick will be attracting zombies from blocks away every time you use it. Which is where the machete comes into play. While close combat is clearly riskier than firearms, it does allow you to get a clean kill without alerting every zombie in the neighborhood.

His and Hers M4 Assault rifles. This assault rifle is quite a fantastic weapon for battling zombies. It is a very accurate assault rifle. Its ideal range is just about perfect for battles with zombies, and the accuracy is a dream- perfect for scoring that headshot.
But don't use it on automatic- while it might pulverize one or two zombies, you'll also be out of precious ammunition before you know it.

This last couple are going for a full stealth mode. The bow has a lot of advantages- aside from being much quieter than a firearm, it also has the advantage that you can retrieve your arrows. You can even make new arrows with far less expertise and equipment than it takes to produce new bullets for your gun.
And while we've already discussed the merits of the machete, it is worth noting that this bride came prepared with a side arm- to use if she ends up in a close quarters that make her bow unwieldy.

Friday, May 18, 2018

Here are two more Chibi conversions I made of Kingdom Death characters. These are the first two that I made that weren't for my own collection. I'm still quite fond of how they turned out, and I kind of wish I'd gotten to keep them (I might have to remake them later).

Thursday, April 26, 2018

The Dung Beetle Knight is one of Kingdom Death's more iconic monsters, and one of the more difficult ones to deal with. Here is a DBK that I got to do for a client.

The mini is absolutely fantastic- the hardest thing about painting him is that he's been painted up very well quite a few times before- it is a little bit tough to make him unique and awesome at the same time. I used some vibrant color changes for the highlights and shadows to give him a sort of subtle irridescent look.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Quite a number of times, I've made cake toppers that included pets (usually dogs or cats, but there was that one couple who had me include an alpaca).

Anyway, here are two couples that did just that. One of them had more casual clothing than usual, while the other couple was definitely defending themselves from the zombie horde with their trusty hound.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

I've been showing off the conversions from my Chibi Kingdom Death set for a while now- but I realize that I've neglected to post up good pictures of the survivors that I've made.
Here is a group of them.

Since this is an ongoing project, I'll be continuously making more, so there will never be a final "all of them together" post.
The conversions range between custom basing and extensive resculpting.

Alistair uses the head from Sebastian Cross- I had an extra since I used Cross' body for my Kingsman. His body comes from a Mistmourn Shaman, with his skirt sculpted on, and his weapons come from Kingdom Death sprues.
I really liked the idea of painting his eyes to match the prologue, even though he's clearly a Lantern Year 2+ survivor (since he's not barefoot, and has a bone blade).

For Zachary, I wanted a survivor that was a little more muscular than scrawny Alistair, so I used the body from Yokozuna (I still have the head for making a Sun Priest later).

Rail Raiders Infinite's Rhinestone took me by surprise. She just looked perfect for Kingdom Death, and just needed a color scheme that would work with the set.

It seemed wrong not to make a version of the crossover Candy and Cola for my Chibi Kingdom Death set. The head comes from Candy, and I found the best body to start from was a Shrine Ninja Kunoichi. Much of her skirt is sculpted on.
I would have put Cola on her skirt, but I got to thinking that he should be his own survivor. I haven't finished his conversion yet, but I'll make sure to share it.

The Plague Doctor doesn't seem like the most natural mini to make for Chibi Kingdom Death. I was looking through my bits box one day, and I found an old Rackham goblin, and I could see all of the conversion that I'd need to make.
For his color scheme, I decided to make a tribute to the Shovel Knight villain/hero Plague Knight. I'll probably do a couple other Shovel Knight characters as well (Specter Knight would make a good survivor as well).

I've posted him before, but here is my first False Messenger- the Messenger of Humanity. Until they have their own rules, they're playing as survivors.
He was made from a Yamazaru Ninja. I did quite a few things to him- sculpted his cape and head wrap, swapped out his weapons, and gave him a sheathed twilight sword on his back.

And here's the girl who started it all. No changes to her except for the chibi face base.
I bought the resin resculpt of her as well, and I have to say that it is a clearly superior sculpt and cast. Honestly, already having a twilight knight to fill the role has kept me from painting up a second one, so I'm considering what sort of twilight knights I could convert her into.
At the moment, I'm oscillating between making her a cat for the Neko Twilight Knight or giving her a costume as the Halloween Twilight Knight.

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Welcome to Garden Ninja Studios, the source for your miniature painting and sculpting needs. We are currently accepting commissions. Please check out our forum and gallery and email us about your project. Watch here for photos of our recent studio projects, links to painting tutorials and other cool stuff.